Most of this blog has actually been about on-prem stuff, but hey, it is 2024 so let's do something in the cloud. Let's try to put Gentoo Linux on OCI.
Articles by Hans Fernhout
Storage replication using DRDB
Storage on a personal computer, or laptop, is always tied to the physical machine. It would be nice to have it synchronised between all of my computers. Linux has this possibility with a Distributed Replicated Block Device (DRDB).
Complete linux system encryption
A quick guide on how to encrypt a complete Gentoo Linux system. By now I have encrypted all my laptops and my little home server. This blog is just a reminder on how to do it, from A to Z. Perhaps it is beneficial for others too.
Regenerate Dovecot certificate
After upgrading my Gentoo based home server, the e-mail client on my laptop could no longer make a connection to the IMAP server. It seems that Dovecot v2.3.20 requires stronger encryption.
Encrypt an existing root disk
Sometimes I get struck by a sense of security consiousness. This time I realized I have all my content on simple btrfs formatted disks, without any encryption. That's not very secure, is it?
Backups
Of course I hope I never need a backup, but just in case...
Making a btrfs RAID-0 disk group
Alpine Linux persistent storage on the Raspberry Pi
Alpine runs in memory on the Pi, which is great for performance, security, and for minimizing wear on the SD-card. The downside is that it has no persistent storage. Everything done on such a system is cleared out on reboot.
A new theme
I started this blog with the default theme, but after a few articles I think it is time for a more practical theme.
Alpine Linux
I already said that I like Gentoo Linux, but it can take some effort to keep it up to date, especially on less capable hardware. I tried to install Gentoo on a Raspberry Pi 4B and found a way how to do that, years back. However, that project is dead now, and the successor project on the Gentoo Wiki looks a lot more complicated. I have done those cross compile excercises in the past, and found that it requires even more maintenance than regular Gentoo. No thanks.